Cola Wars: Coke Vs Pepsi

1. Using the current ratio, discuss what conclusions you can make about each company’s ability to pay current liabilities (debt).

Coca-Cola’s confidence in its domination over the soft drink industry eroded, and its advertising slogans began to recognize industry competition: “No Wonder Coke Tastes the Best”. While Coke’s slogans have always centered on the product, Pepsi’s advertisement emphasized the users of the product. Rather than targeting every market, Pepsi focused on the demographic environment. Pepsi foresaw the mass appeal of the youth generation for soft drinks and in 1961 divulged the successful slogan “Now, It’s Pepsi, for Those Who Think Young”. The campaign was such a success that Pepsi’s sales growth outperformed that of Coca-Cola.

This is a financial comparison between Pepsi and Coca Cola in terms of company liquidity, solvency, asset management, profitability, and valuation between the years 2008 and 2009 respectively.

Rivalry: The rivalry between Coca-Cola and Pepsi is extremely high; however, both companies continue to remain profitable. Prior to the 1980s, pricing wars negatively affected profitability for Coca-Cola and Pepsi. After Coca-Cola renegotiated its franchise bottling contract and both companies increased concentrate prices, the rivalry began to focus on differentiation and advertising strategies. Through creative advertising campaigns, such as the “Pepsi Challenge” where Pepsi ran blind taste tests to demonstrate that consumers

For more than a century, Coca Cola and PepsiCo have been the major competitors within the soft drink market. By employing various advertising tactics, strategies such as blind taste tests, and reward initiatives for the consumer, they have grown to become oligopolistic rivals. In the soft-drink business, “The Coca-Cola Company” and “PepsiCo, Incorporated” hold most of the market shares in virtually every region of the world. They have brands that the consumers want, whether it be soft-drink brands or in PepsioCo’s case, snacks. With only one soft-drink market, the two competitors have no choice but to increase sales by stealing the other competitor’s clients. This led to the term, the “cola wars” which was first used

Hot summer days are a time to have fun and stay cool. This Pepsi advertisement shows how much joy and pleasure you can receive from choosing a nice cold Pepsi drink over a typical Coca-Cola drink as their own personal choice as a refreshment. It uses affective appeals and strategies to sway more people towards purchasing a Pepsi drink instead of a Coca-Cola drink. The appeals and strategies utilized includes: need for affiliation, need to achieve, need for escape, and the mirror strategy. The advertisement puts major emphasis on the whole idea that Pepsi is better than Coca-Cola; therefore, individual seeking a refreshing thirst quencher that is only displayed at Pepsi.

As we all go about our day, we rush to place to place. Around us there are things for sale, people everywhere trying to make money. As we are rushing around, we all tend to get thirsty as we have a thousand things going on. In America we have dozens of choices when it comes to soft drinks, although the two most widely known are Coca-Cola and Pepsi. Many are often stuck between choosing Coke or Pepsi; even though they are slightly different in appearance, taste, and price it makes a world of difference to the customer.

The rivalry between coke and Pepsi is legendary and not just only product development and occasionally get personal collusions which sometimes resonate their marketing and promotional activates.

Coca-Cola is a leading beverage industry in the United States and many other countries in the world. PepsiCo is also a leading worldwide beverage company, but they are also the parent company of the Frito-Lay and Quaker Oats Companies. This makes PepsiCo a leader in the beverage, snack and cereal industries. As consumers, we have indulged in their products for many years. My personal preference has always been Pepsi over Coke, which is why I was very interested in conducting this analysis. Regardless of the results, I will always seek out a Diet Pepsi over a Diet Coke and so will many of my physician friends at Children’s Hospital who start their mornings with a Diet Pepsi. These personal preferences are what contributes to a company’s profits through net sales. However, the key performance measurement tools used are not based on sales alone. Calculating liquidity, solvency, and profitability ratios on a regular basis give us a better insight on the performance and overall health of a company.

EVA stands for economic value added. EVA is a value based financial performance measure based

Since EVA is positive for both proposals, the division 's current EVA would improve by $542,000 and therefore both proposals would be accepted. The decision is also in the best interest of the company.

The company known as Coca-Cola today was started in September of 1919, but the first Coke brand was served as early as 1886. Since that time it has grown to be one of the most globally recognized brand names with a stock value of $167 billion. Coke’s plan has always been developed with the future in mind. Right away the company realized that it was more profitable to manufacture the concentrate used to make carbonated drinks than to bottle it. From that point on they saw the entire world, not simply the originating country, as their desired market. It seems only practical that the company should pursue this agenda until conquered then focus the effort on expanding into different product lines. This logical

These two-company’s economic characteristic include their market size and growth rate from the early 2000’s to 2010. Coke and Pepsi have struggled for years in the carbonated and non-alcoholic sector. According to Barbara Murray (2006c) "But as the pop fight has topped out, the industry 's giants have begun relying on new product flavors and looking to noncarbonated beverages for growth.” (Murry, 2006). For instance, Coke boasts in the advertisement as the king of the soft drink; as a consumer of both products, I agree. About 15 years ago, I was selected to participate in a critiquing of Coke and Pepsi products. Additionally, my travel to Africa in 2007 and 2010 provided the same raving review for the Coke Cola products. Apparently, Coke and Pepsi have been rivals for ages locally, regionally, nationally, multinational, and globally, therefore, one expects them to have an on-going rivalry when marketing the high-energy beverages.

PepsiCo’s corporate strategy had diversified, in 2008, the company into salty and sweet snacks, soft drinks, orange juice, bottled water, and ready-to-eat drink teas and coffees, purified and functional waters, isotonic beverages, hot and ready-to-eat breakfast cereals, grain-based products, and breakfast condiments. Strategies that kept their brands at the top were tied to new product innovation, close relationships with distribution allies, international expansion, and strategic acquisitions. A new element of PepsiCo’s corporate strategy was product reformulations to make snack

Belch and Belch (2001) stated that the ultimate goal of an organization is to create brand loyalty, which in return, ensures continued patronage. Pepsi Cola is one of the world’s most popular drinks holding about 29.3% of the entire fizzy drinks market (Esterel, 2011). Pepsi cola is a brand known for reinventing itself with its various logo changes. These rebranding campaigns have been strategically positioned to keep the Pepsi brand relevant within its target audience, the youth. Pepsi still desires to be perceived as trendy, and appealing to the younger generation. The rebranding campaigns are meant to appeal to the forth-coming generation and eventually create brand loyalty. Pepsi have adopted a brand campaign set to distinguish them from other brands. They present the brand as a contemporary product as opposed to a classic relic and thus they grab the attention of the youth. It is therefore very important to understand the loyalty consumers have towards a “brand” that has undergone several changes that include facelifts and general rebranding. It should however be noted that any one of these evolutionary trends will always have consequences. It would be interesting to unravel how much of a success Pepsi has achieved over the years especially with its most recent rebranding